ORILLIA, Ont. - Where Julian Fantino goes, controversy is often not far behind, but all the criticism is mere "noise" in a storied 40-year career, Ontario's top police officer said Friday in looking back on his four decades in public service.

Forty years ago Friday, a 27-year-old Fantino became a cadet with the Toronto Police Service. In the years that followed, he rose through the ranks and went on to helm the police forces in London, Ont., York Region and Toronto before taking on his current role as commissioner of Ontario Provincial Police.

Fantino, 67, has come to be known by Ontario residents as an outspoken and occasionally brash leader, but one who aggressively champions road safety and the fight against child pornography.

"I don't think you can do this job effectively and be an effective leader by being mealy-mouthed or not standing up for what you believe and sharing those beliefs with others," Fantino said Friday after an anniversary celebration at provincial police headquarters in Orillia.

"I just try and stay very focused on doing the right thing for the right reasons in the right way, and I'm not really too concerned about the controversy."

There have been high points and low points in Fantino's career, but he said the lowlights are not the numerous controversies in which he has been mired. He pays no mind to those, instead saying the toughest days were the ones involving tragedy.

"Oh yes, there are many lowlights," Fantino said. "I suppose the ones that come to mind very quickly are having to deal with police officers killed in the line of duty."

Fantino's words and actions have sometimes garnered less than favourable reactions.

His critics called for his dismissal after wiretapped conversations between Fantino and Ontario aboriginal activist Shawn Brant were released last summer.

The transcripts indicated Fantino told Brant he would do "everything I can within your community and everywhere else to destroy your reputation," and that "your world's going to come crashing down."

The court documents also suggested provincial police were minutes away from moving in on First Nations blockades on Highway 401 during the aboriginal day of action in 2007.

Fantino has also come under fire for policing surrounding an aboriginal occupation in Caledonia, Ont., where residents have collected more than 4,000 signatures on a petition calling for an inquiry into his actions. The petition accuses Fantino of being biased in favour of aboriginal protesters.

Some Caledonia residents have called for provincial police to step in and end the occupation, which has dragged on for three years with no end in sight. But Fantino has said it's not the police's job to settle aboriginal land-claim disputes and that politicians must act.

Fantino has also faced allegations he was involved in spying on a close friend of the head of the Toronto Police Services Board through wiretapping while he served on the force in the early 1990s.

In 1989, when he was a staff inspector, he apologized after releasing statistics suggesting black people commit most of the crime in Toronto's Jane-Finch neighbourhood.

He stood by his decision to release the data to a race relations committee, but said his mistake was to do so without knowing a reporter was present.

More recently, Fantino has become mired in a nasty internal disciplinary hearing in which he is accused of vindictiveness and witness tampering.

The commissioner raised eyebrows last year when he announced the force would no longer use media-friendly roadside traffic blitzes on long weekends, effectively reining in the force's gregarious public face of such blitzes, Sgt. Cam Woolley.

"There's nothing funny about unsafe motor vehicles," Fantino said at the time.

It was typical of Fantino's no-nonsense approach, but also highlighted one of the issues he is most passionate about: road safety.

As commissioner, Fantino has been aggressive in pushing for harsher penalties for unsafe drivers, including a much-heralded law aimed at street racing that gives police the power to seize vehicles from drivers caught going 50 kilometres per hour over the speed limit.

He credits such reforms with a drop in traffic fatalities.

"Last year, compared to the year before on OPP-patrolled highways, we had 130 fewer people killed, so that to me is very gratifying," he said.

Fantino has also long championed the fight against child pornography, which he calls "a most vile crime."

"That's one area where I think we moved the yardsticks forward a great deal," he said, noting possession of child pornography was not a criminal offence in the early 1990s.

"But it's been tough, it's been difficult."

Looking back on a career filled with many successes but much criticism, Fantino said he prefers to recall the good days. As for future plans, he'll keep people guessing.

"I never worry about tomorrow," he said. "I don't have any self-interest in worrying about where my life, my career is going to take me. Wherever it goes, I'm sure that I'll do well."